Todd Curley Q and A – Round 16

SOUTH Fremantle coach Todd Curley's weekly question and answer session during the 2015 McDonald's WAFL Premiership season.

Curley spoke this week following Saturday's narrow four-point loss to Claremont despite the Bulldogs kicking six goals to two after quarter-time, and looking ahead to Sunday's crucial final derby of 2015 with South Fremantle needing a win to move back into the top five.

QUESTION: After quarter-time you dominated the game but just couldn’t quite make up the whole difference. It must have been frustrating given the dominance you had to not come away with the win?
ANSWER: Yeah look I was probably more disappointed in our start. We just didn’t come to play and when you give up a start like that, the rest of the game you are under real pressure the whole time because you are chasing. I'm proud of our effort after quarter-time, but we were so poor early we couldn’t get back.

Q: Their forward-line was on fire early but I guess you know that coming into the game and had to be switched on from the first bounce to shut them down?
A: To be honest I though three of their first four goals came from us trying to thread the needle with our ball use through the centre square, but turned it over and then it's pretty hard for the backs to defend that sort of blatant turnover. That certainly put us on the back foot and they got a bit of confidence from it, and then you are chasing the game and it's a bit out of our control. We wrestled back but then gave up another really late on the siren at quarter-time which hurt even more. To our credit, we kept coming but it wasn’t enough.

Q: You must have been happy with the defensive effort to keep them to two goals after quarter-time? 
A: I was happy with our effort all across the ground after quarter-time, but we've spoken about it before that against good teams, you have to take your chances and you certainly can't give up the sort of start that we did.

Q: You both had enough set shots on goal that you should have nailed to win, but also with the amount of ball inside-50 in the last quarter suggested you should have found at least one more goal?
A: We had our chances. There were a few set shots that we just have to kick. In the second half we missed some gettable ones, even though I know they did too, but when you are coming from behind you just have to kick them.

Q: Your most dangerous forward again looked like Haiden Schloithe when he was out of the goal square in the second half?
A: Yeah look he's a good player. He was really good for us after quarter-time and I thought he got us going a bit too playing midfield early in the second quarter. The majority of the time he is one player he takes his chances when he's up forward as well.

Q: Big challenge on his own virtually for Brock Higgins against premiership ruckmen Mark Seaby and Mitch Andrews, but he held his own well?
A: In the end I think we were about even on clearances and he did have a big job against the two of them. He battled manfully I thought and what you know about Brock every week is that he will give you everything he's got.

Q: Some guys really stepped up with Brendan Verrier and Tim Kelly probably playing their best games of the year?
A: I thought across the board we hung in there. I thought Chris Luff was good down back too after the start but it's just frustrating that at the end of the day four points go begging because we didn’t bounce out of the blocks. That meant we were on our heels and then under pressure, and then not being able to get it done.

Q: Did it hurt a little not being able to play James Sellar and Zac Strom as tall forward targets because of their tall forward-line?
A: Really the game was out of control so we put Jim back and went small in the forward-line for a bit, and it probably helped us but ideally we'd like to keep our structure. But you have to think on the fly sometimes and if it's not working, you have to change it.

Q: Drop out of the top five now as well after the loss and the next few games now become almost must-win?
A: It's going to be like that for the rest of the year so we just have to win each week and if we do that, it will take care of itself.

Q: Another derby now on Sunday. You came back well to beat them last time also at East Fremantle, how do you make sure that happens again?
A: Well we pretty much started like we did last week against Claremont last time we played East Fremantle so the biggest thing for us is that we have to start well, and prepare well. That starts on the track this week and we have some stuff to fix, we'll train pretty hard and look forward to the challenge and opportunity to play for four important points and hopefully jump back up again.

Q: They have obviously been struggling with a change in coach and losing seven straight, does that make them a little difficult to prepare for?
A: I think derbies are obviously pretty competitive at the best of times, but realistically for us it's about getting ourselves right. Claremont were good last week early, but we certainly didn’t come out to play so the challenge for us is to come out and be prepared to go from the start because it's pretty tough come from behind and win games of footy.